• Move comes after teen brand has biggest-ever month online
Bauer Media statement on move of Dolly to online only brand:
As teen brand Dolly records its best month online, Bauer Media is responding to the changing demands of how readers engage with the brand by switching it to an exclusively digital model.
November will be the biggest month for online traffic in Dolly’s history, with the number of page views already up 77% year-on-year and users up by 18% from the same time last year. It is estimated that Dolly will hit 1.2 million sessions this month. Across its social channels, audiences are also growing rapidly up 76% year-on-year.
As a result, Dolly magazine will cease to be published bimonthly.
More than 90% of Dolly’s 14- to 17-year-old target audience interact with the brand via their smartphones, with the mobile first Dolly.com.au redesigned as a fully responsive on demand mobile site early this year, proving popular with its audience.
Dolly.com.au will continue to cover breaking celebrity news, fashion, beauty and lifestyle content, with popular fixtures such as Dolly Doctor – which last week was recognised in research from the University of Newcastle as providing outstanding and reliable health advice.
Nick Chan, CEO of Bauer Media, said: “Dolly readers predominantly engage with the brand on digital and social platforms and they do so with greater frequency than is possible with a bimonthly magazine. This means it’s no longer feasible to continue publishing the magazine on a regular basis.
“Dolly has played a part in the lives of many Australians over the years, which is why we’re delighted its outstanding content continues, but now exclusively on the channels today’s teens prefer to interact with most.”
All full-time staff impacted by the change are expected to be offered other positions within Bauer.
The last bimonthly issue of Dolly with three collectors covers featuring members of Aussie band In Stereogoes on sale from December 5.
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Former editor Tiffany Dunk wrote about her memories of working on the title for News Corp:
Today a little part of me died at the news Dolly magazine has published its very last printed magazine.
I was fortunate enough to not only grow up reading Dolly (and fruitlessly sending in pretty awful poetry I hoped they’d print in their pages) but to live out my teenage dream of sitting in the editor’s chair many years later.
For four years, I was privileged to be part of a generation of teenage girls – and the not infrequent boy – who turned to us for help in all areas of their lives. And the fact that they turned to us in an age where social media was flourishing and information available at the hit of a Google search spoke volumes to the importance of the magazine, regardless of what cynics may say.